12/9/01

A caption for a photo by the Reuters news agency, again, December 9, 2001:

Members of Hamas pray during a rally held at Ain al-Hilweh refugee
camp near the port-city of Sidon in south Lebanon, December 9, 2001.
Palestinians poured into the streets in Lebanon on Sunday to mark the
14th anniversary of the founding of the militant Palestinian
Islamist group Hamas.

A caption from the Associated Press, describing a photo of the same scene:

A group of Hamas suicide bombers, with fake dynamite strapped around
their chests, parade at the el-Hilweh refugee camp near the southern
Lebanese city of Sidon on Sunday, Dec. 9, 2001, during an anti-Israel
demonstration organized by Hamas to mark the 14th anniversary of its
founding. The group said they hoped to join their Hamas colleagues in
Palestinian areas to carry out suicide attacks against Israel.

[Ed.: Reuters, which announced that in order to be thoroughly
even-handed it would not use the word "terrorist" to characterize
the September 11 hijackers, later reported—after Israelis
intercepted a large hidden cache of weapons destined for Palestinian
militants—that a State Department
official "said the United States, which gives Israel about $2
billion a year in weaponry used to kill Palestinians, objected to
the $100 million shipment to the Palestinians on the grounds that it
contributed to the escalation of violence." (Emphasis added.) Another
dispatch from Kabul refers to Osama bin Laden as the American forces'
"bogeyman."]